CONTENTMENT COTTAGE

WELCOME! In the midst of each life's chaos exists a place of calm and sunshine. I call mine Contentment Cottage. It is the place where I write my stories and find the peace of God. I've posted my "Ice Pick" reviews and will continue to add some of what I call my "Ice Crystals": poems, articles, essays, fillers, and recipes.

Friday, October 06, 2006

THE ICE PICK

World-Building, by Stephen L. Gillett. Cincinnati, Ohio : Writer’s Digest Books, 1996. (Science Fiction Writing Series) ISBN 0-89879-707-1. $16.99.

Accessible, and ranging from the simplest concepts to the most complex, this book should be helpful regardless of your level of scientific knowledge/expertise, whether you write hard or soft sf, or even fantasy set on another planet.

If you need to calculate an orbit, surface gravity, escape velocity, or the angular diameter (width) of an object in the sky, Gillett provides the formulas and the implications. If you want to try out a planet with a sulfuric acid sea or a neon atmosphere, know the color of vegetation on a planet circling a small red star, or what happens when a main sequence star (like the Sun) runs out of fuel (in about 5 billion years), the information is here.

Even if you write only soft sf, Gillett goes into the weather you might find on your planet, what the sky would look like if you have two suns, or your world orbits a brown dwarf, or whatever. And he provides many interesting scenarios for disasters that might drive or background your plots.

Gillett certainly seems to know his stuff, and that’s important in a book that is basically a technical manual. But then, as he says, he does planets for a living. And while sometimes you must bend the rules, as in using FTL travel, ("After all, you’ve got a story to tell!") there is lots of information in this book to help keep you from committing some serious flaws in designing your world.

Throughout his book, Gillett provides ideas for worlds, points out settings that have been underutilized or untried yet, and warns against the pitfalls of trying to do certain things with your planets.

It has an excellent index and a reference bibliography if you want more technical and detailed information. In addition, the text is full of "hyperlinks" to help you along.

Working out ahead of time how your planet will work, should help keep your story consistent and provide you with "a fruitful source of the conflicts and details that animate a story."

I highly recommend this book.

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter. Apr. 1998. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, July 1999; and in Virtual World Builders, Aug. 1999.}

Labels: , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home